


On the Other Side

by JusttMee123



Category: Psych (TV 2006)
Genre: Everyone can see all colors, Except the color of their soulmate's eyes, Set during 1x02, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:20:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25643419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JusttMee123/pseuds/JusttMee123
Summary: Juliet O’Hara is the newest member of the Santa Barbara Police Department. She is driven, ambitious, and has something to prove. She does not have time to worry about anything else, especially not finding her soulmate. So it’s too bad that life has other plans.Or, after a chance meeting in a diner, Juliet discovers things are (quite literally) greener on the other side.(Companion to my other story Searching for Blue, but can be read as a standalone fic. Soulmate AU, pre-Shules.)
Relationships: Juliet O'Hara/Shawn Spencer
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35





	On the Other Side

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this was supposed to be a quick little companion to my other story, Searching for Blue. It kind of got out of hand. I'm not all that sorry about it.

Juliet O'Hara has never put much stock in soulmates.

She knows the stories, the ones that revolve around how the world changes when you find your soulmate. How you hold hands, or touch their hair, or even just nudge their foot with yours. And then everything seems shiny and new, and it takes a while to get adjusted. Everyone makes such a big deal about it.

She also knows how incredibly rare it is. Because come on- there are billions of people in the entire world, and you happen to find that One Person who was meant for you? You'd have a better time finding a needle in a haystack.

Plus, she just doesn't understand the logistics of a lot of it. How are soulmates determined anyway? And when are they determined? It's a statistical improbability that you and your soulmate are the same age, or even a few years apart in age. What happens if you and your soulmate are born decades apart? What if your soulmate lives in another country, one that's halfway across the world? It's a little unfair that all of this is predetermined, and that you have no say in the matter. It makes her wonder just how much of her life is "destined to happen" and how much free will she actually has, which in turn makes her head hurt if she thinks about it for too long.

And she also knows it's possible to fall in love with someone who isn't your soulmate. Look at her parents. Her mother knew when she married Frank that he wasn't her soulmate, and that hadn't mattered to her.

(And maybe their marriage had ended in disaster, and maybe her mom had eventually found Lloyd and could all of a sudden see brown with no problem, but that was neither here nor there. The point still stands.)

Would it be nice to find her soulmate? Absolutely.

Is she counting on it? Not exactly.

And besides, she doesn't totally get the appeal of soulmates. Maybe it's just because she hasn't found hers yet. She knows people who have, though. And when they did, all of a sudden they started saying things like " _We_ love strawberries" or "You didn't tell _us_ it was your birthday" or " _Our_ dream is to own a bed and breakfast in Maine". They described it as finding their other half. Which Juliet thinks is ridiculous.

She is not half of a whole. She is not half of a person. She is an entire person by herself, thank you very much, and she cannot imagine having to share her identity with someone else. It's almost a little insulting. She does not need anyone to complete her, soulmate or not.

Still.

She wonders what green looks like. Especially since a large chunk of the world is green. Every time she asks someone to describe it, they can't. They just tell her it's the color of trees, or grass, or (if her brothers are feeling particularly immature) snot. Nothing at all helpful. Everything that is supposed to look green to her is simply a hazy gray-ish color. And likely to stay that way for as long as she lives.

She's not a starry-eyed teenager. She's a cop who's long since accepted that. She's not going to walk around touching every stranger she sees, because not only is that weird, it's downright creepy. The only thing creepier than that is the fact that there are people who do walk around trying to touch strangers. It's desperate and kind of pathetic. And Juliet is many things, but not desperate nor pathetic.

Anyway, she has more important things to worry about than finding her soulmate. Like her new partner, for example. Lassiter is quite possibly the Grumpiest person on Earth, with a capital G. She has no idea why the chief assigned them to each other. They have next to nothing in common. And she doesn't even know why he's so grumpy because he doesn't speak to her except to give her orders.

And on top of it, no one at the station seems to take her seriously. Granted she's been there for less than a week and still very much in the probation period. But she had hoped for a fresh start in Santa Barbara. A place where no one knew her, and she could be anybody. And instead she is cast in the same role she had in Miami. The young, pretty, inexperienced detective whom everyone thought they had to coddle.

It's nothing at all what she had expected or wanted for this new job. And more than once, the thought of moving back to Florida has popped into her head. But another thing she is not, is a quitter. Her pride won't allow her to do that. She's determined to stick it out and prove herself, no matter how long it takes.

Which is how she finds herself volunteering to stake out the inside of a diner while she and Lassiter are pursuing their latest suspect. She finds the perfect vantage spot at the counter and settles in. It's not exactly a hard job to do. A uniform could have done it. But it gives her the chance to show off her adaptability and versatility and all those other buzz words Lloyd had insisted she use on her resumé.

She has no idea how long she'll be there, so to kill time she orders a water and resigns herself to waiting around for a while. She knows Lassiter is in his car somewhere nearby, probably staring at her through binoculars, so she knows she has to be at the top of her game. Not that she ever isn't, but it's especially important right now.

But not even two seconds pass before a guy around her age is sidling up next to her and insisting she's stolen his seat. She scoffs, but he sits down next to her and persists. He's a bit disheveled, but in a way that tells her he probably spent hours cultivating the look, and he's got a sort of disarming charm that she knows would work on her if she had the time. She tries her hardest to ignore him, but he won't let her.

It doesn't escape her notice that his eyes are green. Or at least, that they would be if she could see green. It also doesn't escape her notice that he's trying to go for a casual touch. He's definitely trying too hard, definitely one of _those_ people, the people she can't stand. Each time she sees him try to touch her, she moves away. She is on the job, dammit, and she can't afford to let some stranger in a diner distract her.

She doesn't bother biting back her less that warm responses at first. He either doesn't get the hint or doesn't care. Something tells her it's the latter. Which only annoys her more.

She quietly endures his juvenile (read: insulting) imitation of her for as long as she can, then is annoyed that he's succeeded in getting her to talk as much as she already has. Her mind flies to Lassiter. No doubt he's watching this whole thing go down, and he'll rip her a new one for it. She has to find a way to get rid of this guy.

Except then he launches into a new impression of her, and what he's saying is a little _too_ spot on. She could brush off the thing about her parents' marriage because not only is it wrong, it wouldn't be hard to guess how long her parents would have been married based on how old she looks. And the thing about her recent relocation could have been a lucky guess, too.

But it's what he says about her cats that sets her on edge. He's absolutely correct, right down to their colors and temperaments. She struggles to come up with an explanation of how he knows all of that without them having met before. Which she's pretty sure they haven't.

She snaps at him, demanding to know if they know each other _somehow_. She's defensive and suspicious and yeah, maybe her anger is a bit misplaced. And maybe she feels a little bad about it for half a second. But then he opens his mouth again and nothing but snark comes out and she takes it back, he deserves every bit of her anger.

She's about to tell him off when the bell chiming over the door draws her gaze to the man walking in, and she suddenly remembers why she's there in the first place. She wants to kick herself for letting herself get drawn into a conversation with Random Diner Guy, and settles for picking up her purse and rifling through it. She tries to make it seem like she's fed up with him (not really a stretch) and searching for her wallet to pay her bill. But, of course, it doesn't quite work.

"Oh my gosh, you're a _cop_ ," Diner Guy says, a little too loudly for her liking, especially considering her suspect is sitting two seats away from him.

"I'm not a cop," she scoffs. Her hand locates her gun, and she subtly peeks out the window and looks for Lassiter. Diner Guy is still talking, listing evidence the supports the idea that she's a cop, and of course he's spot on yet again but she wishes he would just shut up already. Out of the corner of her eye she spots Lassiter and backup converging on the diner, so she asks Shawn for a favor. He actually listens to her when she tells him to duck, _thank God_ , and finally she can focus on doing her job.

She hadn't realized how close he'd managed to scoot to her during their conversation. Her hand knocks into Diner Guy's shoulder as she pulls her gun and aims it at the suspect, whose eyes go wide as he stares at her. Half a second later, Lassiter storms through the door and pins the suspect to the counter.

Juliet doesn't really see any of that, though, because her world has suddenly exploded. Her hands shake as she tries to keep her sights set on the suspect, but it's suddenly much more difficult to keep her focus.

She knew that there were a lot of green things around her, but it's _everywhere._ Like everywhere, everywhere. The flowers on the tables, the glasses in front of her, the trees outside the windows, even her own damn shoes are green. It's all around her and so vibrant and so, so overwhelming.

And the brightest green thing in her field of vision? Diner Guy's- _Shawn's-_ shirt. She finds herself looking at him, all curled up with his arms protecting his head, instead of keeping an eye on the suspect. Staring at him, she realizes he's supposed to be her soulmate. Because of course he is. _Of course_ he would wear the most obnoxious shade of green. _Of course_ her soulmate would be this insufferable, random guy she happens to run into at a diner. _Of course_ that's the kind of luck she has.

She has to get out of there. She has to leave, right now, before Diner Guy looks up and realizes he can see a color he'd never been able to before. Thankfully, by the time she reaches that conclusion, uniforms are already hauling the suspect to his feet and out the door. She hastily lowers her gun and snatches her purse, shoving her gun back in unceremoniously.

"First time pulling your gun?" she hears him ask sarcastically from behind her, and she bristles. He's wrong, but he sounds so sure of himself that she's surprised he even bothered to phrase it as a question. But she needs to get out of there, out of the diner, out of town, maybe even out of state and all the way back to Florida. So she lets him believe what he wants to believe, stands, and quickly strides to the door, careful to keep her back to him.

Except she can't help but glance back at him as she leaves. She's far enough away that she's fairly sure he can't see the color of her eyes. All she can see, though, is his stupid bright green shirt. And that's all it takes to help her make up her mind. She's going back to the station, processing this suspect, doing all the arrest paperwork, and then putting in a transfer request. She doesn't care if it makes her look bad.

If Lassiter notices that she took a second to follow or how flustered she is now, he doesn't mention it. He doesn't really say anything at all, except to tell her to put her seatbelt on even though she was already reaching it. Normally it would bother her. But this time she just stays silent as Lassiter puts the car in drive and pulls onto the road.

She listens as Lassiter calls in the arrest over the radios and announces that they're on the way back to the station. She half hopes another call comes in and they're called back into the field for something else. Maybe a bank robbery. Or a home invasion. Or maybe even a physical altercation. Something that has a lot of action and excitement and doesn't require her to think too much. No such thing happens, but she spends a while daydreaming about it.

By the time they get back to the station, her head is back on straight. She's not going to transfer back to Miami. She doesn't have to. She is Juliet O'Hara. She doesn't run away from things, especially not an unwanted, obnoxious, immature, arrogant soulmate. She has something to prove. And she can't do that by turning tail and fleeing the second things get complicated. She's staying.

Besides, Santa Barbara is a big city. There are thousands of people here. She'll probably never run into Diner Guy again.


End file.
